Terminator 54

Dissident Voice

How
could Californians be smart enough to defeat a deceptive 'Racial Privacy
Initiative,' which would abolish the state's tools to enforce civil rights
laws, yet in the very same election be dumb enough to elect an action-figure
movie star as their new governor who has no plan other than to cut, cut,
cut already cut-to-the-bone state agencies?

Actually,
voter intelligence had little do with the outcome of the Oct. 7 recall
election. Fear, frustration and yes, anger—ugly and easy anger—is what ties the
two seemingly disparate votes together. It's not a pretty picture and it
doesn't bode well for the state, its governance, and Californian and national
politics.

While
there will be much parsing of the election results and their wider impact, the
vote wasn't a right-wing victory sweep. Understanding how Proposition 54, a
conservative anti-civil rights proposal, could be rejected by an even bigger
margin (64 to 36 percent) than the margin that recalled the governor (55 to 45
percent) is important.

The
Racial Privacy Initiative was the latest effort by the controversial Ward
Connerly to achieve a 'color-blind' society. When announced three years ago at
a Federalist Society meeting, the state's civil rights community began an
unprecedented effort to track and defeat it. Early polls identified its impact
on personal health care as the wedge issue—because different races have
different health and disease patterns. If it passed, the state could no longer
assist in identifying those trends.

Fast-forward
to the recall election. The initiative was placed on the Oct. 7 ballot.
Fund-raising was helped by a lieutenant governor who channeled massive campaign
contributions into a 'No on 54' committee, where he could star in its TV ads.
The campaign to save the job of Gov. Gray Davis discovered the 'No on 54'
campaign—which was better organized than Davis'—and reached out, thus raising
its profile. There was a unified message, no infighting and the main message
wasn't about race: it was about health care—the prospect of not being able to
get quality care if race-based data could not be collected and studied.

"It
was about health care. It was not about race," said a No-on-54 steering
committee member who asked not to be named. "People heard that getting the
'black and while' out of politics was going to hurt them."

So,
was it a great liberal victory over conservatives? Perhaps, but it was also a
victory for politics of personal fears. And that's just what the Prop. 54
message had in common with the recall and the election of actor Arnold
Schwarzenegger as governor.

California
has rarely seen a candidate with as little political substance and as much
public charisma as Schwarzenegger. To be sure, the short campaign season helped
him. He refused to debate. The state press didn't hold the Hollywood celebrity
to the same standards they hold traditional candidates. And so, his speeches
and campaign Web site lightly touched on the hot-button issues that polls found
people were angry about.

Meanwhile,
there was real fear and frustration in the electorate. The state's economy is
terrible. The governor and legislature didn't solve the energy crisis before
the public lost billions. The federal government didn't help with a $38 billion
state deficit. Taxes are too high. To top it off, the governor was an aloof
technocrat who put his finger in the political winds before ever taking a
stand.

In
contrast, here was an action-figure movie star who sounded like a Democrat
early on—pro-choice, pro-gay. He promised to kick ass, intimidate lobbyists,
shake-up the system—all while saving the state. Empty as these poses may seem
to people who care about the content of politics, it's undeniable there is real
frustration, if not anger, in the California electorate and it was easily
tapped.

It's
facile for skeptics and cynics to snidely observe that when you live in an
entertainment state, you're more drawn to 'political leaders' who look heroic
and can act the part. But underneath the recall's success, Schwarzenegger's
appeal—and the rejection of Prop. 54—is an electorate acting out of visceral,
personal fear.

Already,
pundits are predicting Schwarzenegger will have a terrible time governing. It's
true he will soon confront the reality that you can't be the 'People's
governor' and cut the jobs of teachers, policemen, firemen and many programs
that keep people going, like the state's version of Medicare.

The
Oct. 7 election shows just how vulnerable and volatile the times have become.
Soon Californians will see there are no easy answers—on racial privacy or
governing the state.

Steven Rosenfeld is a commentary
editor and audio producer for TomPaine.com, where this article first appeared (www.tompaine.com)